The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)Babur, Emperor of Hindustan
History
The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)
Babur, Emperor of Hindustan
Babur, Emperor of Hindustan, 1483-1530; Mogul Empire
The earlier (_see_ Table, No. 2) has varied circumstantial
warrant. It meets the need of an archetype, one marginally
annotated by Humayun, for the Elphinstone Codex in which a few
notes are marginal and signed, others are pell-mell,
interpolated in the text but attested by a scrutineer as having
been marginal in its archetype and mistakenly copied into its
text. This second set has been ineffectually sponged over. Thus
double collation is indicated (i) with Babur's autograph MS. to
clear out extra Babur matter, and (ii) with its archetype, to
justify the statement that in this the interpolations were
marginal.—No colophon survives with the much dwindled Elph.
Codex, but one, suiting the situation, has been observed, where
it is a complete misfit, appended to the Alwar Codex of the
second Persian translation, (estimated as copied in 1589). Into
the incongruities of that colophon it is not necessary to
examine here, they are too obvious to aim at deceit; it appears
fitly to be an imperfect translation from a Turki original,
this especially through its odd fashion of entitling "Humayun
Padshah." It can be explained as translating the colophon of
the Codex (No. 2) which, as his possession, Humayun allowably
annotated and which makes it known that he had ordered
`Ali'u-'l-katib to copy his father's Turki book, and that it
was finished in February, 1531, some six weeks after Babur's
death.[15]
The later copy made in Humayun's first decade is Haidar Mirza's
(_infra_).
IV
Muhammad Haidar Mirza _Dughlat's_ possession of a copy of the
Autobiography is known both from his mention of it and through
numerous extracts translated from it in his _Tarikh-i-rashidi_.
As a good boy-penman (p. 22) he may have copied down to 1512
(918) while with Babur (p. 350), but for obtaining a transcript
of it his opportunity was while with Humayun before the
Timurid exodus of 1541. He died in 1551; his Codex is likely to
have found its way back from Kashmir to his ancestral home in
the Kashghar region and there it may still be. (_See_ T.R. trs.
Ney Elias' biography of him).
V
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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